Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Test

#NoNoNovember: Day 12: Test
by TB Schmid
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Raj groaned, knee tendons popping away as he stood up from the monitor. It was an old Klipsch Heresy that Vince refused to shit-can. Temperamental little bastard, so Raj had to get up close and personal during his sound checks.

“Shit!” He barked his shin on the - whatever the hell it was. Mitch said it was a perfectly-scaled model of the Syrian Pentagram, which he and Vince had convinced Lizzy to use as a stage prop. They’d rigged the center of it with all kinds of pyro shit, and she was supposed to emerge from the smoke and mayhem as the Goddess during the intro to their “Vortex” chart-buster.

“Whatever”, Raj grumbled, massaging his shin. Those three were into some pretty crazy shit, even when they weren’t hitting the pipe. He made sure the power feeding the pyro racks was still disconnected before moving to test the microphones.

He flipped the toggle on mic 1. “Testing...1...2-” Feedback screamed back at him.

“What the fuck, Jimmy?” he called out to the scrawny kid behind the soundboard.

“Sorry! Hang on a sec!” Jimmy unplugged a cable from one side of the board and shoved it into a different port. “Ok, give it a shot. Hey, did you check the pit? Thought I saw lights.”

Raj looked over his shoulder at the Pentagram. He could see the bundle of power cables, clearly unplugged and resting on the floor a foot or so away from the prop. Definitely no lights there.

“You saw shit, Jimmy. It’s DC’d.” He leaned back to the mic. “Testing...3...5...7…” His voice resonated through the small theatre, sounding crisp and clear. Jimmy put a thumb up as Raj moved to the next mic.

“Testing. Testing. 11...13...17…”

“Hey what’s with your count, dude?”
“Prime numbers, dumbass. Lizzy likes’em. Says they help her channel her ‘positive feminine energy’ so I-”

“WHOA!” Jimmy cut him off. “What the fuck?!”

“What now?”

“Lights, dude. I’m telling you, check the pyro plugs before you blow your ass up!”

Raj flipped him off and checked them again, even though he knew they weren’t connected. He didn’t know if Jimmy was fucking with him or seeing things, but doors would be open in about an hour so they had to wrap this shit up. He couldn’t know that one particular Door would be open well before that.

He moved to mic 3, Vince’s vintage Myrtle that he’d had modified to replace Ear Trumpet’s spring assembly with - you guessed it, folks! - a pentagram.

“Testing...19...23...29...come in Goddess. We’re ready for you - do you copy?” He chuckled to himself. Behind the soundboard, Jimmy was standing, eyes wide as subwoofers.

“MESSAGE RECEIVED,” a host of female voices thundered from seemingly everywhere, and Raj fell to his knees...

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